ABSTRACT
Charles was urged by broad strategic considerations towards intervention in the Italian peninsula. The scale of Charles's triumph in 1525 sprang the delicate mechanism of Italian politics. The newly released Francis posed as they would be protector of Italian freedom, now under threat from Habsburg hegemony, and rallied to his cause the city-states of the peninsula. Hostilities between Charles and Francis were formally concluded by the Peace of Cambrai which was signed in August 1529 and largely reiterated the Treaty of Madrid. With the Peace of Cambrai came the end of the Italian Wars. Of the great Italian cities, only Venice remained friendly with France, and by the 1530s her power on the mainland had been spent. During the earliest years of Charles's involvement in Italy, Ludovico Ariosto was composing his allegorical romance, Orlando Furioso. Ariosto predicted that by the work of his faithful captains, Charles would be the one to take and hold the land of Italy.
